American actress Eva LaRue lived a real nightmare for 12 years when a man sent her several violent threatening letters.
After his arrest in 2019, accused James David Rogers was sentenced to 40 months in prison last Thursday. He had previously pleaded guilty to charges of intimidation and harassment.
The story began in March 2007, when the actress received the first of dozens of letters in which a man posing as “Freddie Kruger” promised to rape and kill her.
“There is no place on this planet where I can’t find you,” he wrote in one of his missives.
The man wrote that he would do the same to Eva LaRue’s young daughter, who was five years old when the first letters were sent. When the child turned 13, the man began sending mail directly targeting the teenager.
“I am the man who has been following (your mother) for the past seven years. Now I have turned my attention to you,” the letter, sent in 2015, reads.
“You look so beautiful in your photos on Google. Are you ready to be the mother of my child?” That person wrote in another letter.
He also started calling the girl’s school saying that he was her father and that he was coming to pick her up.
Eva LaRue was so scared that she sold her Southern California home to move to Italy with her family for several months.
The actress eventually returned to California, where she bought a new home but used a business name to protect her identity. But despite her precautions, letters started arriving at her new address.
Over the years, the FBI collected traces of DNA found in the letters and was unable to link them to anyone.
In 2019, investigators decided to use genetic inheritance to determine an individual’s identity.
Through this technique they were able to identify James David Roger and then began tracking him down. One day, the man went to eat in a restaurant. The FBI found him eating his food and throwing the garbage into a garbage container.
Officers later recovered the suspect’s tablecloth; They extracted his DNA from the straw of his soft drink and compared it to the letters. A DNA match led police to arrest the man at his home in November 2019.
